The Future in a Mirror
by 713stars
Summary: No, pink was not an appropriate color for stealth or murder, but the kunoichi they’d faced today had not originally been destined for either of those things. She’d been a preordained liaison..., a preordained bride, and a designated peace keeper. Itasaku.
1. Chapter 1

Published: 09/18/08 at 1:15 AM

Disclaimer: We do not profit from this. We only get to borrow the beastliness.

Authors' notes: Ba dum bum. Enjoy!

Prologue:

Fugaku watched the little girl tinker with his son's shuriken. Her pale, nimble fingers spun the dangerous metal stars and flicked them across the dark grain of the polished wood desk. The complicated bun that bobbed at the back of the little girl's neck was the color of the pale roses that grew that guarded the eastern border of the Uchiha District…the sole border that backed up to the civilian neighborhoods.

A small cough retrieved the Uchiha patriarch from his solemn contemplation. His onyx eyes withdrew from the small window on the other side of the courtyard and landed sharply on the document before him. The confident strokes of black on the creamy parchment were numerous and bore the grace of a practiced hand. Only a few more strokes were needed to turn this elegant piece of paper into a pact that would bond people together for decades.

A breeze slipped into the courtyard and urged a paper lantern to sway congenially over the clan leader's head. Fugaku's eyes rose to the lantern—and to the red and white uchiha fan that adorned it. He sighed quietly as his renowned eyes struggled to see what lay in store for that symbol.

The breeze died, the lantern fell back into its normal position, and a fine brush dipped into ink that was as dark and obscure as the future itself. It took only a few seconds for the clan leader's hand to grace the page with his signature, and only a few moments more for the red haired man across from him to sign his own.

"Well, Uchiha-san" the red haired man said softly, "there we are."

His voice lacked the stern, icy authority of the Uchiha clan, but made up for it with a warm, tranquil wisdom that often accompanied the tones of the village's distinguished civilians. The civilian leaders, after all, had to have strength of their own to keep them strong before the warriors with whom they entrusted their lives.

Fugaku didn't respond immediately, but nodded swiftly in Haruno Soramichi's direction.

"It is done," he said as he extended his hand over the low table upon which the document lay.

Soramichi smiled and reached out to shake Fugaku's hand, but was startled when—instead of clasping his hand—Fugaku pressed a small chain into his palm. "Until the marriage, then," Fugaku said, and there was no mistaking the dismissal in the shinobi's voice.

The leader of the Haruno family smiled stiffly and rose to his feet. "Until then."

As Soramichi walked out of the pleasant courtyard at the heart of the Uchiha mansion, he glanced behind him. As he had expected, his daughter had flown out of the sliding door as soon as she had noticed her father beginning to depart from the strange home which she'd been forced to spend so much time in lately.

He smiled when he saw her but could not help but wish that she wouldn't be so eager to leave the courtyard in which she would someday be married.

But that wouldn't come to pass for many years. The red-haired, warm-hearted man still had many years with his little girl before he even had to give her the Uchiha crest which dangled from the delicate silver chain that was pooled in the depths of his robes' pockets.

* * *

Chapter One:

For a moment, crimson eyes narrowed and nearly followed the flash of pink that trailed behind the black ANBU mask. The rough stroke of a memory jostled the silent ninja's focus, but was quickly overcome. With a slow blink, Uchiha Itachi cast off the unwonted recollections and continued to monitor the battle that was dragging on below him. Pink-haired little girls did not concern him right now, but his madly laughing blue-skinned partner did: Kisame had underestimated the leaf ninja this time.

Dusk sent dark shadows creeping across the forest floor and up the gnarled tree trunks of Konoha no Sato's northern forest. The crescent moon hung poised over the darkening woods like a Damoclean sickle, but whether the blade would be stained with Konoha's blood or Akatsuki's blood had yet to be seen. Splintered tree trunks jutted into the half-darkness, barely illuminated by the orange glow of a distant sunset that pierced the thick forest. The trees were victims of a strategic maneuver gleefully executed by the towering figure at the center of the carnage.

This figure was grinning maniacally at the forest around him as his yellow eyes swept subtly across the scene around him. His massive blade rested on his shoulder, waiting for the battle to renew itself…or for its master to force the battle to start again despite any feelings of the opposing party

"I hope you haven't given up, Little Leaf," the mist nukenin taunted. "I haven't even broken a sweat."

Kisame's voice fell flat through the shadows and the wrecked vegetation. The blue-skinned ninja frowned at the heavy silence. At least the quiet guaranteed that the Kyuubi brat wasn't among the Konoha ANBU squad that he and his partner had come across. Kisame's lips twitched at the notion of the clueless blonde kid learning any sense of subtlety.

As Kisame reminisced, a strange shape was rapidly approaching his back. A slender shadow slid between the fallen tree trunks and twisted through the debris that littered the mossy ground. Nara Shikamaru crouched low behind a fallen tree, focusing on the deadly shadow that he was projecting across the dusk-darkened forest.

Hoshigake Kisame threw a cursory glance behind him and nearly saw the slinking shadow that was approaching his left leg, but his eyes snapped back around when the stoic voice of Hyuuga Neji from the trees ahead.

"Of course we haven't given up, you fool" Neji scoffed, warily poised for an attack on a narrow branch high above the shark ninja's head. "Why would anyone forfeit such an easy victory?" His haughty tone did not reveal that he was desperately hoping that the shark ninja had not seen the Nara genius's deadly shadow.

Kisame grinned even wider. "Because Konoha's Bingo Book has a "flee on sight" advisory for me and because…"

Kisame suddenly shot into the indigo sky, releasing a barrage of shuriken towards Shikamaru's hiding spot before he landed heavily on a jagged stump at the edge of the clearing.

"And because you are obviously outclassed, judging by that pitiful attempt at a diversion," Kisame finished.

He had barely finished speaking when a gloved fist collided with the back of his head and sent him barreling into the earth.

"I'd say that our diversion wasn't half bad," the attacker whispered as she emerged from the trees. She suddenly flew towards the mist ninja again, fist reared back for another attack.

Kisame rolled to the side and lunged away just before the young woman in the cat mask landed another gut-wrenching blow on his body. His eyes narrowed with excitement when he saw the young woman change tactics and fling a foot towards his face with deadly accuracy.

"This is more like it, Little Leaves," he jeered as he caught the oncoming appendage in an iron grip and tossed the young woman's body into the path of the ninja who had just run forward to assist his teammate.

Neji caught Sakura by the hips and roughly diverted the force of her landing to the ground beside him so that he could continue his dash towards the nukenin.

Sakura gasped as she hit the ground, silently cursing her teammate for not having the compassion to at least make sure that she had landed on her feet.

As she tumbled over the sparse patches of moss and grass, a cloud of dust rose around her.

In moments, she was back on her feet, but before she charged after Neji and Kisame once more, she caught sight of a few gleaming shuriken embedded in a far-off tree trunk…some of the projectiles Kisame had thrown earlier.

She quickly realized that Shikamaru had not rejoined the battle.

Her green eyes suddenly widened, and a certain Uchiha watching from across the clearing could see the terror that ran through her verdant irises despite the shadows cast on her eyes by the ANBU mask.

In three bounds, she was at the unconscious Nara's side, crouching over him in the shadow of his "protective" tree trunk. Her teeth ground against each other as she assessed the damage.

Within seconds, she had made a decision. Her pink hair flew violently when she ripped her mask off and placed two gloved fingers in her mouth.

A piercing whistle emerged from her lips, signaling retreat to her remaining conscious teammate. This was supposed to be a scouting mission only, not a mission worth losing one of the greatest ninja of the Rookie Nine over. When they got back to Konoha and got Shikamaru into the hospital, they could tell the Hokage that Hoshigake Kisame had been lurking at the outskirts of the Northern Forest. After all, it had only been Kisame. Neji would have noticed if the Uchiha prodigy had been hiding around here, right?

Sakura hefted the Nara genius to her shoulders and lunged into the darkness of the woods. Trees flew past her as she took a route through the forest that would take her past as many sentry outposts as possible, just in case Kisame was motivated enough to follow them into the village.

Minutes later, Neji caught up, falling heavily on each branch and panting heavily.

"I could have had him," he snapped as soon as he was within hearing distance.

"Not if his partner showed up." Sakura hissed, "Not if the battle dragged on for more than ten minutes. Not if that thing pulled another 'exploding water shockwave' out of his stupid little bag of tricks."

Neji said nothing, but ran faster so that he was a few yards ahead of Sakura and her injured baggage. "Well," He grumbled coldly, "He didn't seem interested in following us, at least."

"Good" Sakura said quietly, relieved that Neji was being somewhat reasonable.

If he hadn't been, it would have been a long night back in Konoha.

"That was disappointing." Kisame sighed, shouldering the Samehada in the firelight.

Itachi didn't respond, preferring to keep his attention focused on the flickering tongues of flame.

"I was hoping to get something of a workout in, considering the fact that you won't train with me, and those sand ninja were pathetic."

"You seem to have found the battle difficult enough," Itachi answered blandly.

For a moment, Kisame's mouth hung slightly open, but then he snapped it shut and rolled his eyes. "Oh, you're talking about the little girl with the big fist, Itachi-san."

Itachi nodded minutely at the flames.

"She just bruised me a little bit. She would've been down in seconds if I was actually fighting her. You saw how easily distracted she was, neh?"

Itachi said nothing, but his head tilted forward until his dark hair fell over his brilliant half-lidded crimson eyes which glittered with the reflection of the flames.

He sat up slowly and rested an elbow on a knee he'd propped up. "Pink," he said softly, with some degree of either awe or scorn.

Itachi's partner chuckled. "Pink," he said, "is not exactly a prudent choice of hair color for a shinobi. But hey, neither is blue…"

Kisame continued to talk with an absentee conversant as Itachi closed his eyes and revisited the memories he'd discarded earlier.

No, pink was not an appropriate color for stealth or murder, but the kunoichi they'd faced today had not originally been destined for either of those things.

She'd been a preordained liaison between shinobi and civilians, a preordained bride, and a designated peacekeeper.

As the comfortable gurgle of Kisame's voice went on, Itachi considered a trip to find out where exactly little Sakura Haruno's life had strayed from the path which would have intertwined her life with his.

"Hey, you know, we should probably keep an eye on that girl" Kisame drawled cautiously.

That comment caught Itachi's attention. He lifted his head and gave Kisame a look that to many would have said, "Shut up before you lose your head," but to Kisame meant, "Go on."

"She was the one who killed Sasori, right? Pink hair, leaf, right age…unless she has a twin--"

"No" Itachi replied softly, and the flames glimmering in his eyes suddenly seemed thoughtful.

Kisame was quietly amused by his young partner's interest…or at least by his state of non-ambivalence. He chuckled. "Definitely a 'person-of-interest', then. Perhaps we should thank her for getting that creep out of our hair, neh?"

"Perhaps" Itachi said, but he'd already made up his mind.

* * *

Today's chapter was brought to you by blue. Purple edited today. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: We don't own the Naruto franchise.**

**Authors' notes: This probably should have been added to the first chapter, but we're a hasty little team. Enjoy! And thank you to our story-alerters and especially our reviewers.**

* * *

**Chapter Two: **

"_Completely irresponsible. What was that stupid little girl thinking?!"_

"_Almost disasterous"_

"_Who taught this child discipline?"_

Sakura held still, even though her clenched fists trembled behind her back. Harsh words were harsh words, but harsh words coming from the woman you admired more than anyone else in the world were particularly acrid.

Listening to the Hokage rant behind closed doors was one of the most painful experiences of Sakura's career. The esteemed blond woman's voice became clear and then muffled as she paced back and forth across her office, but it never lost the bitter touch of disappointment in her young apprentice.

"_You, Hatake, had better not have had a part in this"_

A second voice entered the one-sided conversation at this accusation. _"Of course not, Tsunade-hime. Sakura just… Sakura, well…Sakura is just Sakura, and there's nothing you or I can do about it". _

"_Yeah, well we'll see what I can and can't do about it. Send her in"_

At this last statement, which spoken with all the burning determination in the world, Sakura took a breath as far into her lungs as it would go—so far that it hurt. By the time she released it, the door to the Hokage's office was already being pulled open by her masked sensei.

When Sakura's jade eyes looked up from her dirt streaked ANBU attire, she was baffled by the cheerful crease of Kakashi's visible eye. "Have fun" he said, and then he slipped past her down the staircase with a searching hand already in pursuit of a certain book that was hiding in his kunai pouch.

He must have been at a good part when Tsunade had demanded his presence for "counsel" on the subject of his former student's disobedience.

"Come in, Sakura" Tsunade called curtly. The busty blond was perched on the edge of her desk, frowning furiously at the door. Konoha sparkled behind her, blissfully unaware of the conflict that was about to occur in their Kage's office.

Sakura shuffled in and closed the door behind her with a reluctant hand. She chewed her lip nervously, worrying the rivulet of blood that had formed when Kisame's first attack had cracked her mask.

Tsunade's eyes honed in on the scab on her lip, resulting in the rapid formation of a scowl.

"Oh. One second" Sakura sputtered, passing two fingers over the small wound. Nothing but pale, un-marred skin was left in the wake of the green glow at the tips of her fingers.

At the display, Tsunade's lips twisted into what could have been a suppressed smirk or an annoyed frown.

"I hope you healed up your teammates as well as you fixed yourself up" Tsunade ground out gravely.

Ouch, that hurt. "Of course, Tsunade-shisou. Neji-san and Shikamaru-san are both fine now. I made sure of it"

A short burst of air emerged from the Hokage's nose. "Like you made sure to give me a heart attack this evening, hm?".

Before Sakura could reply, the blond woman slammed a fist down of her desk. "Damn it Sakura! I told you not to leave the village!"

This time, Sakura did cringe and grimace. Through her rose-colored eyelashes she saw her mentor hastily stand up to take the weight off of her newly-fractured desk.

"Do you think that sneaking out of the Konoha will benefit anyone if you get caught?" Tsunade asked forcefully, staring Sakura down. "You killed one of them Sakura, and you know what that means to a bunch of control freaks like that. Maybe you haven't been directly threatened, but they want you dead. You're--"

"—a symbol" Sakura finished coldly. The pink haired young woman sighed and frowned at her mentor. "A symbol that Akatsuki isn't invincible. A symbol of Konoha's power. I know!"

By now, the air was tense. This wasn't the first time an argument like this had begun, but it was the first time that the seed of conflict had bloomed. Before, Sakura had just dropped the argument before voices became raised. But Sakura had never actually left the village without permission before.

This time, Sakura had actually broken a shinobi law. She'd not told her supervisors that she was taking Hyuuga Hinata's place on a scouting mission and she'd left misleading evidence to cover her tracks.

She'd told Shikamaru and Neji that she'd received special permission to take Hinata's place. She'd old Ino that she was sick. She told everyone lies, sticky little lies that would still be attached to her when everything came out into the light.

Call it recklessness, stupidity, or bravado. Call the cause of Sakura's infarction what you will, but it probably won't come anywhere near the truth.

She hid it so well. Her clear green eyes were impenetrable jade, hiding the desperation and frustration. Her smile was the same. Wide and beautiful. Her demeanor was still cheery and eager. But when the healing, the hospital administration, and political business she'd been entrusted with was over and done with, the façade fell.

Her eyes looked hollow as she walked back home down lonely, lantern-lit streets towards the civilian district. She'd nearly lumbered into people on a number of occasions in the past month. She was numb when she walked home, stiff and unfeeling so that she wouldn't register the silence and the darkness when she walked into her home.

She didn't eat dinner at home any more. She couldn't bear to sit at the empty table.

She didn't make tea. That had never been her job.

She didn't watch television. Not when there was no one else to sit on the worn couch beside her.

She had once been so ignorant, so blind to Sasuke's and Naruto's pain. But now she knew what it was like to come home to silence.

Last month, Haruno Soramichi had died from a heart attack while his daughter was splinting ninjas' bones and removing shuriken from shinobi muscles. The last time he'd seen his daughter, he'd seemed to know that he was going to die. He looked peaceful in the moonlight, but his warm green eyes were softer and more concerned when Sakura came out to the roof to say goodnight.

He was buried beside his wife, in the civilian cemetery, under the Sakura Tree for which his daughter was named. He left the Haruno estate to his daughter and his three nephews, who had already married and left the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

Until her cousins returned for their share of the will, it was Sakura's duty to tend the home she and her father had shared since she was born.

She was stuck there. And she was trapped in her own village, a prisoner of her own accomplishments. It was almost like Sasori had managed to attach some chakra strings to her before he died, and those strings had caught on her old home.

If the pieces of the Sasori puppet hadn't been impaled and then burned, Sakura would have imagined that the toy red-haired teenager was grinning at her from his grave.

"SA KU RA"

Sakura snapped to attention, having missed most of Tsunade's rant.

The Hokage sighed. "Did you hear any of what I just said?"

Sakura met her mentor's amber eyes, which had softened somewhat during the expulsion of the tirade.

"I won't do that again, Tsunade-shizou" Sakura said with a pained smile.

"What? Zone out on me or sneak out?" Tsunade asked, rolling her eyes.

Sakura paused. "Both. I'll pay more attention to the speech I've heard at least twenty times in the past four years AND I won't try to sneak out again"

"Good. I'm pretty sure you're lying to me, but that'll do for now" Tsunade said tartly.

"No. I'm not lying. That was a close call, if the Akatsuki really do care about my existence as much as you and the Kazekage seem to think they do" Sakura replied. Her lips twisted into an annoyed grimace.

Tsunade snorted. "Oh, sure, you listen to Garra, but not to me. Fine, fine"

"Am I dismissed, now, Tsunade-shizou?" Sakura asked. She'd heard that tone too many times to take Tsunade's distress seriously. Plus, they both knew how authoritative Gaara could be, even to shinobi of foreign villages.

"Yes" Tsunade reluctantly ceded, "But meet me at training field three at seven sharp, got it?"

Sakura's mind had already flown out the closed door behind her when Tsunade spoke, but at the last comment, her pink haired psyche snapped back to brain like it had been attached to her by a rubber band.

"Really?" Sakura choked. It had been years since Tsunade had felt the need to train Sakura personally in the field of hand to hand combat. These last few years had been devoted to the healing arts, to the hospital, and to the lab.

"Yes, really" Tsunade said impatiently.

"Hai!" her pink-hiared apprentice agreed gleefully. A smile most unbefitting of the earlier tense conversation crept onto her lips as she bowed stiffly and walked back towards the door.

After Sakura had left the Hokage's Tower and was on her way back home, Tsunade sighed and then ran a finger over the seal scroll that had been stuck to the bottom of her desk. A drop of blood left over from when her knuckles had splintered her desk left a ruddy smear on the seal, which promptly dissipated into the dark wood.

Moments later, a tall male ANBU poofed into existence beside the Hokage's desk.

"Ma'am" he greeted her, softly yet clearly from behind his mask.

"You know who was just here. Follow her tonight, at least until she goes home" Tsunade said quietly.

"Should I notify the others that Miss Haruno is under surveillance?" the ANBU asked.

Tsunade paused and bit down on her lip. "No, she's not on full probation. This is just for tonight" she replied after a few seconds of contemplation. Her brows furrowed in annoyance with the situation.

"With all due respect Hokage-sama, Haruno Sakura directly transcended Konoha's shinobi laws. These laws would dictate that she be punished much more severely"

The blond woman scowled. "Oh, get yourself out of the dark ages, Katsumo. We're not going to behead my apprentice for going stir-crazy"

For a moment, the ANBU was still and silent. Then, he nodded and was gone into the night.

* * *

Crack. Slam. Thump. Crackslamthump. Crackslamthump.

Sakura grinned as she slipped into a faster pace, as she gelled together the individual movements of the killer combination that Lee had shown her yesterday. For a little while, it wouldn't even bother her that she wouldn't get to practice this combination in the field for a very long time. Even if Neji and Lee and Ino got to go hunting through the woods for the Akatsuki her team had encountered, she would still be training with one of the legendary sannin. She wouldn't let Naruto down when he finally returned from training with Jirayah.

Her room was a lonely gym, but it was functional. The bright red crimson wall in front of her was adorned with her family's trademark white circle.

"We are to this village what that white circle is to the red it stands on. We are the cycle of peace and tranquility that perseveres over bloody battles. We are the human dignity of a world where value is placed on being superhuman" Sakura's grandmother, another redhead, had once said.

Sakura's grandmother had boasted of a fine lineage, one that had "bonded the civilians together in the face of all those nasty Senjus and Uchihas". Few ninja in Konoha knew it, but some civilian families were just as proud of their histories as the families with doujutsus or ninja dogs. There was a civilian aristocracy just as much as there was a shinobi one. Luckily for Sakura, each system largely ignored the other.

Sakura's hair brushed over her back as she repeatedly slammed her fist, her foot, and then her wrist into the wooden beam she'd insulated with pillows. It was hot in her room, so she was wearing what she would have worn every day if her life had kept her in the civilian district: simple clothes, comfortable but too loose to be practical for fighting with other people.

Her black shorts and tank top with the kanji for "sweet" drawn in sequins on the back would have looked ridiculous to Ino or TenTen. Hinata might have tried to me more understanding, but she would she would have a harder time accepting the attire than the other two. Ino and TenTen had been to the civilian district with Sakura a few times before, but Hinata probably hadn't been there in her whole life.

Crackslamthump. Thump.

Sakura fell gracefully to the floor, landing in push-up position. She watched the pink bangs that hung down over her face as she methodically raised and lowered herself to the dusty planking, perhaps thinking about how desperately she needed to clean her house…or perhaps ducking out of the view of the ANBU who she had just noticed in the shadow of her neighbor's home.

What she didn't notice was that the ANBU assigned to her had departed long ago and that the tall figure in the shadows was in fact much larger than any Konoha shinobi. In fact, a closer look would have revealed that the lazy figure leaning against the building was shrouded in a sweeping red and black cloak. An even closer inspection, most likely requiring the Uchiha or the Huuga bloodline limits, Sakura would have noticed that the Akatsuki's skin was a distinctive blue that looked even paler in the moonlight.

If Sakura had been able to do these things, she would have been on her guard immediately. But as fortune dictated, she was neither aware nor wary.

She didn't notice that there was another figure watching her from inside her room, shrouded in genjutsu and shadows, but he was there. Itachi watched her from her desk chair, shielding his chakra.

He'd already been through her room, searching for the Uchiha crest that should be on premises. He'd been through her apartment back in the residential shinobi district and meticulously expunged every sign of his intrusion.

A part of him wanted it back, if only to destroy it. There were ancient seals imbedded into that marriage-token and if someone with the appropriate knowledge were to come across the chain and it's little red and white charm, it might be used to locate him.

The chances of that were dependent on the availability of reliable seal-masters and on Sakura's affinity for displaying the charm, both of which were very low indeed. In fact, it was probably better to just let the girl keep it.

But that option didn't appeal to him at the moment. At the heart of his genius lay curiosity, and this pink-haired civilian-turned-shinobi was a new curiosity that Itachi wasn't quite ready to let go of yet.

He watched the chain as it hung morosely from her ankle, the little crest swaying slightly from the movement of Sakura's push-ups.

Should he get it back tonight, or let her wear his family's symbol for a few days longer?

Suddenly, his attention was diverted to Sakura's actions once more.

She snapped to her feet and arched her back as she stretched. Her bare feet padded softly across the wood floor as she made her way over to the bed by the window and collapsed onto it. The pillow slowly deflated as Sakura's head pressed it down.

She turned on her side to face the window, and the moonlight glimmered of the pink hair that was cascading down the pillow.

"G'night Naruto, 'night, Sasuke" she mumbled softly.

For a moment, Itachi's eyebrow lifted in quiet appraisal. Then, he remembered the two plants that were currently reposing on Sakrura's window sill in front of her.

The first one was a tangled mass of dark green leaves with violent flashes of orange flowers peeking through the darker foliage. Naruto.

When his eyes fell on the other plant, the distant and indistinct urge to smile passed through him for a moment.

What would his outoutou think if he found out that his old teammate had deemed him a little purple drooping flower that was all closed up?

* * *

alrighty, then. Enough set-up right? Next chapter, we pick up the pace with some action! AH! Purple! Purple is MIA, so the grammar in this might suck. She's sustained severe injuries from stupid schoolwork.


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